<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Here's A Little More Sunshine For You, My Dear. by Anonymous</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23347558">Here's A Little More Sunshine For You, My Dear.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Abandonment Issues, Dai-nana-han | Team Minato, Diverts from the Manga, Gen, Inaccurate Timeline, Somewhat Jiraiya Slander, Yondaime and Kakashi is the Dynamic that Deserved Better</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 09:21:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,670</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23347558</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The two times Minato gives Kakashi his word and keeps it, and the one time he doesn't.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Namikaze Minato &amp; Hatake Kakashi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>87</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Anon Works</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Here's A Little More Sunshine For You, My Dear.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>1.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>Kakashi is five years old and his gloves are quite strange.</p><p> </p><p>For one thing, they’re not the standard ones from the shinobi stores that almost all freshly-minted genin shop at. They’re grey over his knuckles and navy blue on his palms, and the stitches on the side of his thumbs seem to be fraying already. They’re less gloves and more dual-colored fabric held together clumsily by thin threads. They don’t fit well on his fingers either, a good inch longer on the forefinger than the index, and the glove on his left hand is loose on the boy’s thin wrist. </p><p> </p><p>For another, they dwarf his hands. When Kakashi curls his fingers into a fist to bump knuckles with Minato, there are creases on the fabric and the space between his gloves and his fingers are obvious.</p><p> </p><p>“Say, Kakashi-kun,” he starts, when the shuriken have been plucked off the targets and the dummies are back in their place, and Kakashi blinks at him over the last kunai he’s examining as he packs up. He’s always got this look on his face, like he’s not sure what Minato wants from him when he talks to him. “Where’d you get your gloves?”</p><p> </p><p>The boy puts his kunai into his weapon pouch. His eyes are big and empty like the night sky void of stars over their heads will be in a few hours, curious and young, and he doesn’t smile.</p><p> </p><p>“Father made them for me.” He answers. His voice is sharp and high like the whistles of the blue-grey birds on the border of Kusagakure, the ones that always sang during bloodshed. Kakashi curls his fingers into a fist again, watching the material crumple under the pressure. “He said he’d fix them.” </p><p> </p><p>“You could get them fixed on your own, you know.” Minato points out. He has no idea how to talk to kids Kakashi’s age. “They might make your aim less accurate, so it’s better to have gloves that actually fit.”</p><p> </p><p>“I know,” Kakashi says, and he says it petulantly, voice strained less like the prodigious shinobi he already is and more like the five year old boy who turned when he saw a dog on the street. He shuffles his feet and the dirt forms minuscule clouds under the soles of his sandals. “I know,” he repeats, “but father promised that he’d fix it. He promised.”</p><p> </p><p>Minato has only met Hatake Sakumo once, for five and a half seconds. The man was broad and intimidating and his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes when he offered his name to Minato. As he left after a quick goodbye and a reminder to Kakashi to behave well, the boy had reached out, his tiny fingers suspended mid-air and eyes bright like all the stars in the sky had spilled into his liquid tar eyes, but Hatake Sakumo hadn’t turned to look at him once. </p><p> </p><p>Kakashi’s hand had fallen half a heartbeat later, but Minato never forgot the look on his face when he did. </p><p> </p><p><em> Children of elite shinobi are different from the likes of you and I </em> , Jiraiya-sensei had said. <em> They idolize their parents and love an illusion of them.  </em></p><p> </p><p>“Tell you what,” Minato says, the quiet breaks like the sound of a pin dropping on marble, and offers Kakashi a slight smile. “Let’s fix them together.”</p><p> </p><p>Kakashi blinks. “But he said — ”</p><p> </p><p>“I know what he said, Kakashi-kun,” Minato interrupts. Then he winces. (<em> Don’t speak over the kid, ‘ttebane! </em>) “But your father is an incredibly busy man.” </p><p> </p><p>“He’s the White Fang,” Kakashi solemnly says, like Minato hasn’t been living in this village eleven years longer than he has, and he stifles a smile at how serious and proud the boy looks. </p><p> </p><p>“I know.” The sunshine is fading from the sky and it’s almost dusk. “But he’ll come back from the village in a while, so don’t you think it’ll make him happy to see you learn something new?”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> They’ll do anything to make their parents proud and thrive in the shadow of their legacy.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>“I’ll help you.” Minato adds, when Kakashi doesn’t look convinced. “I’ll teach you how to fix them, and we’ll do it together.” He offers the kid his own hands. “I fix my own gloves all the time, and they look good, right? So I’ll teach you how to do yours.” </p><p> </p><p>Kakashi’s eyes drift from the frayed stitches on his gloves to Minato’s neat, perfect ones. </p><p> </p><p>“Okay.” The kid finally agrees. “But you have to promise to help me.”</p><p> </p><p>Kakashi is strange. He doesn’t stutter when he talks, but he talks slowly, like he knows that if he speaks any faster he’ll stumble over his words. He doesn’t cry either. He walks with his shoulders straight and his hands in his pockets. He doesn’t startle at the sound of kunai clinking. His eyes are, more often than not, curious and dark where other children were bright and innocent. </p><p> </p><p>“I promise,” Minato says, and removes his gloves to offer him his pinkie finger. </p><p> </p><p>Kakashi takes off his gloves too, and it’s a five year old’s finger that links with his as the sun burns out it’s last rays and slips through the edge of the earth. A heartbeat later, the boy smiles, a notable quirk of his lips under the grey-blue fabric, but it’s gone as soon as Minato blinks. </p><p> </p><p>He’s sixteen years old and his student is five and they are both children preparing for war. </p><p> </p><p>He’s sixteen years old and his student is five and they are both children preparing for war, but he lets Kakashi hold onto his sleeve as they walk out of the training grounds an hour and a half later. </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>2.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>In all honesty, Minato thinks that he might have outgrown Jiraiya-sensei when he was twelve, going on escort missions as far as Kirigakure with chunin and jounin subordinates, or delivering intel to some of the bases on the border of the Land of Fire. He hadn’t needed the encouraging hand in his hair that was synonymous with Jiraiya-sensei when he was pleased with something, hadn’t needed the laughter and the teasing <em> hurry up, you’re going to fall behind </em>to encourage him to move faster in the forests, hadn’t needed Jiraiya-sensei for those missions to turn out a success. He’d been on his own since, and he was okay with that. </p><p> </p><p>Then again, Jiraiya-sensei hadn’t noticed it either. Minato saw his figure retreating out of the village gates more than he saw him come in, and at one point, Minato had stopped expecting him to turn around and acknowledge Minato like he had before.</p><p> </p><p>He’d heard about the three war orphans from Amegakure when he was fourteen and stationed near Kumogakure, and he’d thought that that was the last tie between them, severed and left to wither with age. Minato was his student for years. Jiraiya-sensei had never stayed for him.</p><p> </p><p>Minato is many things: he’s twenty two years old and some days the lives he saves seem to barely outweigh the blood on his hands, he’s a genius who’d taken three years to manipulate chakra to his every whim, he’s the one who’s name stuns a battlefield to silence and he’s the fastest man in all the great shinobi nations; but he is <em> not </em>, and he never will be, his sensei’s mistakes.</p><p> </p><p>Kakashi is twelve years old and he takes missions as far as Kirigakure with chunin subordinates as young as fifteen. He’s got his father’s tanto and he’d do anything to make sure he doesn’t end up like <em> that man </em> and his heart is made of ice stretched thin, cold and brittle in equal measures. Obito is fourteen years old and he’s like the summer fireworks Minato hasn’t seen in years. Rin is thirteen and she’s headstrong and brave and everything he wants in a student. They’ll start outgrowing him soon, too old to think that their sensei had all the answers in the world, and maybe that’s what keeps Minato from letting them go.</p><p> </p><p>So he comes back. He always does, and he tries his best to stay.</p><p>. </p><p> </p><p>The day Obito dies is the brightest day of the month. Minato finds two of his remaining students at the rendezvous point forty three kilometers from the Kannabi Bridge. Rin only gives him a brief report of what happened before she’s led away by Yoshino to <em> get a headstart on the way home </em>. Kakashi is slumped against the trunk of a towering tree and he’s crying from a distinctly red eye while his darker eye remains completely void, and the first thing he says to Minato is, “Obito died without seeing the sun, sensei.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Obito died without seeing the sun, sensei. He was crushed by rocks after the bridge was destroyed, sensei. Half of his body was under the boulders and it was too heavy for us to move, sensei. He cried and Rin held his eye in her hand as his heart stopped beating, sensei. I cried the whole time she sealed the chakra points in my eyes, sensei. Obito didn’t deserve to die, sensei. He was just fourteen and we’re just children, sensei.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Where were you when he died, sensei?  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>“I’m sorry,” Minato says. He hates how weak he sounds and the way he feels like wrestling out of his own skin and screaming until the knot in his throat loosens and his lungs can completely deflate again. He hates how his hands shake and his knees feel like giving out and his neck feels like it’s being slowly squeezed by ninja wires with thorns and how he wants nothing more than to run and run until he’s on his own and there aren’t children staring at him with their dead, dead eyes. He exhales and clenches his hand into a fist. </p><p> </p><p>Kakashi pulls at his sleeve with blood-stained fingers. His hands are shaking to the point that it feels like his fingers will pop right off his knuckles and he’s still <em> crying </em>from one eye like he had with two when he was six and Minato had covered his eyes so he wouldn’t see the field medics tear the tanto out of his dead father’s stomach.</p><p> </p><p>“I can’t see from Obito’s eye, sensei,” he says. He’s so small and so scared and Minato hates how easy it had been for him to think of him as a soldier when he saw Kakashi’s hands instead of a child. He pulls again. “And he won’t stop crying, sensei.”</p><p> </p><p>The field medic at the barracks had mentioned that he was delirious from a mix of blood loss and shock. He’d also mentioned the Uchiha eye in the boy’s socket, but Minato hadn’t been ready for either of those things.</p><p> </p><p>Kakashi’s fingers dig into his skin. “Make him stop, <em> sensei </em>.” </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Shinobi are tools. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>“Obito’s gone.” Kakashi says. It’s only when his voice tears and cracks on the words <em> gone </em> like it softened the fact that Obito was <em> dead </em> and buried under crushed rocks without ever seeing the sun again, that he was <em> dead </em> and gone and never laughing again, that he was <em> dead </em> and never coming back again, that Minato realizes that he has no idea what to say to Kakashi or Rin anymore. “Obito’s gone, and he <em> still </em>won’t leave me alone, sensei.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Shinobi are tools. Shinobi are tools. Shinobi are tools. Before he is a boy who’s lost a friend, before he’s a child, before he’s the boy who grew side by side with Minato, before he’s young, Kakashi is a shinobi. And shinobi are tools. Shinobi are tools. Shinobi are tools, and tools don’t have feelings. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Tools don’t have feelings. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Twigs crunch under Minato’s knees when he kneels down to grip the bloody collar of Kakashi’s shirt and pull him close, like he’s seventeen years old and Kakashi is six and so <em> small </em> and they’re standing outside the house where Hatake Sakumo killed himself watching him being carried out in a body bag. Kakashi chokes out, <em> let me go, let me go, sensei, </em>and his fist collides with Minato’s shoulders a total of thrice before his hands go limp. He must be tired. Obito’s eye is still crying blood diluted tears and Kakashi buries his face into Minato’s jacket like they’re seventeen and six and children preparing for war instead of twenty two and twelve and in the middle of one.</p><p> </p><p>“Sensei,” Kakashi chokes, and maybe his real eye is crying too, but there’s no way Minato can tell because his vision is blurring and the leaves of the trees are beginning to melt into the blue of the sky. “Sensei, don’t go.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m not going anywhere,” Minato says. His knuckles turn white from the grip he has on his student and he hates himself tenfold when he realizes that he’s doing this for himself as much as he’s doing it for Kakashi, hates himself for being selfish and daring to hope for warmth when Obito was <em> dead </em> and gone and never coming back. He breathes in like he’s inhaling for the first time in years and <em> stays </em>. “I promise, kid. I’m right here.” </p><p> </p><p>The sun burns in the center and the blue of the sky is the brightest it has been in days. Obito’s eye cries the whole journey back to the village. </p><p> </p><p>
  <b>3.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>Kakashi is fourteen years old and his ANBU mask doesn’t quite fit on his face the same way Minato is twenty five years old and the Hokage hat doesn’t quite fit on his head. They’re an unlikely partnership, the too-young jounin and the too-young genin turned too-young Hokage scorned by the council and the too-little ANBU, and still, they make it work.</p><p> </p><p>Kakashi is taller and lankier and he comes up to Minato’s chin now. He has an ANBU-issued katana and he always wakes up like he’s running from something and he never smiles. He doesn’t call Minato <em> sensei </em> a lot and instead calls him Lord Hokage unless he’s sure no one else is paying attention. Sometimes, he takes long missions out of the village and comes back covered in blood and guts like he’d come just a little close to death and dragged himself away, like he’s still punishing himself for Obito and Rin, but he <em> always </em>comes back. </p><p> </p><p>He’s a little bit bruised and a little bit broken and Minato looks at him and sees all the times he’s failed as a teacher, but he stays, and Kakashi comes back.</p><p> </p><p>“Sensei,” he says, and Minato pauses as his hands reach for the kunai in his pocket, about to head back home after a whole day of work. His face is completely impassive when Minato turns, Obito’s eye shut and his own open, and for a bare moment, he hesitates. </p><p> </p><p><em> Sensei. </em> Not Lord Hokage, like he was to the rest of the village, but <em> sensei. </em></p><p> </p><p>“Yes, Kakashi?” Minato hums. Kakashi’s fingers are turning white around the tanto in his hands.</p><p> </p><p>“You’ll be a great father.” Kakashi says, speaking hurriedly, and it comes out a blur like he’s embarrassed at having to say it. It makes Minato pause all over again and warmth blooms in his heart like flowers in spring. “And stay safe, sensei.”</p><p> </p><p>And Minato thinks, <em> maybe it’s not too late. Maybe I can still help him heal, give him something to live for. </em></p><p> </p><p>He reaches out and tousles the moonlight colored hair on his student’s head like he’s twenty one and telling Kakashi to play nice with Obito, like they’re still the people they were all those years ago, and allows himself to hope for a better tomorrow for both of them. </p><p> </p><p>“You have my word, Kakashi-kun,” he tells his student, and he <em> hopes </em>.</p><p> </p><p>It’s the ninth of October and ANBU operative Hound smiles slightly for the first time in what feels like forever, but it’s gone within a blink. He disappears in a flicker of leaves when Minato retracts his hand. A mere second later, the Fourth Hokage curls his fingers around the kunai in his pocket and disappears without a trace. </p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>